calf that tried to be humorsome?’
‘No,’ said I, ‘and fewer of your gibes.’ For indeed it was no time for tales.
‘“Weel,” said the farmer body to the calf, “I ettled ye for a keeping quey, but a coo wi’ a sense o’ humour is a thing that I canna hae aboot the hoose. The last yin ett a’ the wife’s half-year’s washin’. I’ll e’en hae to see what kind o’ veal ye’ll mak.” So the humorsome calf deed suddenly. It’s a lesson to ye,’ said Mistress May, coming quickly to the end of her parable.
This, as all may see, was ever the way that she jeered at me, and I cannot think how it was that I was not more angered. Maybe it was because she was but a little supple bit thing, like the least of my fingers with a string tied round the middle of it.
When we two got up to the house we went directly into the kitchen. There we found the two dames standing in the middle of the floor, and, as one might say, each turning about on her own pivot, and sniffing loudly on the nose of contempt. I could hardly keep from laughing out loud. I looked to May Maxwell to see if she was at it already. I made sure that, as she saw humour in so many things, she would find this vastly amusing.
But I was never more mistaken. Her little nose was more in the air than usual. I always meant to tell her when she was going on to me that her nose turned up at the end. I never did, however, chiefly because I did not believe that she would have cared a pin if I had said it.
But her advice was worth the trying.
The kitchen, which had an oaken settle down one side of it, had also two box-beds let into the wall, and, in addition, two hammocks hanging for those of us who preferred the swinging beds. Now none of these beds were made, though the linen was clean enough, for Silver Sand took it over to a decent wife in the village of Orraland every three weeks to be washed. The bachelor ways of the house of Rathan did not admit of such a freit as bed-making. It was to us a vain thing. We rose up, and we heaved our coverings over the foot of the bed; or we left them lying on the floor beneath the hammock where they had slipped off. When we got in we drew them over us again. This was our bed-making. But in the two elder women, and even in May Mischief, this innocent and pleasing habit occasioned a new and more bitter indignation.
‘And this is the place that ye hae wiled my Andra and my Johnnie to, puir lads!’ cried Mistress Allison, her twenty stone of bulk shaking with indignation and the difficulties of the ascent.
‘Will ye please to take seats, my ladies?’ said I, standing as politely as I could with my hat in my hand, for I was in my own house.
The two dames looked at me, then at one another. Finally they seemed to make up their minds to seat themselves. This they did, each in her own manner. Mistress Allison took hold of a chair on which some books and drawings of little Jerry’s were laid. As she tilted it forward these slid to the floor. The good lady let herself drop into it as a sack of flour drops on the ground when the rope slips.
The thin, spare, irascible Mistress MacWhirter took out of her swinging under-pocket a large India-red kerchief. Then she carefully dusted the chair, turning it bottom upward in a way which betrayed a rooted distrust of everything in the Rathan. May Mischief simply took a good look at the window-sill, set the palms of her hands flat upon it at her sides, and hopped up like a bird, but backwards.
Now the lads Andrew and Johnny Allison, with Rab Nicoll, their cousin, were hid at the end of the hallan, where the passage led from the back door out upon the moor. They were therefore perfectly within earshot.
As soon as Mrs Allison got her breath she began, ‘Noo, Maister Paitrick Heron, could ye tell me by what richt ye keep my laddies here, that should be serving in their father’s shop and rinnin’ their mither’s messages – you that caa’s yersel’ a laird? A bonny laird, quo’ he, to wile awa’ decent folk’s bairns frae their ain door cheek to his ramshackle hoose, an’ keep them there – a wheen puir bits o’ boys to cut his firewood, and leeve in this fearsome-like hole.’
‘Aye,’ cried the shriller voice of Mistress MacWhirter, ‘and I’ll e’en pit yin to that. It was him an’ nae ither that pat my Jerry, that was aye a guid lad, past the grocering.’
‘Thank ye, mither; your obedient servant, Jerry MacWhirter,’ put in the little rascal from the outside somewhere.
‘Ye are a regairdless hound, a black sheep in my bonny flock, a––’
‘Puir lad that you an’ my stepfaither lickit till he was black and blue, but that ye’ll lick nae mair on this side o’ the grave!’ cried Jerry from the doorway, showing his witty, comical face round the corner.
I thought it was time now to try May Mischief ’s advice.
‘Have ye said all that ye wad like to say?’ I said, looking from one to the other.
Neither of them spoke, knitting their brows and glooming past one another out at the window. The lassie Maxwell, whom I gave a look at before I began, to see how she was taking the matter, had her fingers plaited together over her knee, holding it a little up and dangling her foot as she listened, innocent as pussy-bawdrons thinking on the cream-jug.
‘Now, listen to me,’ said I, very slow and calm, and speaking as English as I could; ‘I have a question or two to put to you both. In the first place, did I ask or invite your sons to come to this my house on the Rathan Isle? As far as I ken they cam’, every one of them, without ever so much as a “By your leave!” They hae been here, a pack of idle vagabonds, eating me out of house and home for the better part of two months. What the better am I of that? They have finished a side of pig for me amang them. I’ll be sending ye in a bonny account, Mistress Allison, for they’re braw eaters, juist like yersel’.’
At this Mistress Allison fidged in her seat as though something was rendering her uneasy. Things were not going just so well. It was one thing for her to abuse her jewels, but quite another to sit and hear an enemy give her sons the rough side of his tongue. Mistress May Maxwell looked on from her perch on the window-sill, but said never a word. Butter would not have melted in her mouth.
‘And as for your son, Mistress MacWhirter, four times I have had to expel him out of my house for ill-bred conduct––’
‘Five! Tell the truth when ye are at it, though ye be a laird!’ corrected little Jerry from the door. ‘I stand upon my rights. Five, by Macmillan’s cup!’1
‘And I declare that I will no longer harbour such a nest of rogues and vagabonds on this Isle of Rathan,’ said I; ‘there has been no peace since any of the names of Allison and MacWhirter came hither. More nor that, I am fully persuaded that they are a’ hand in glove with notorious Freetraders, such as Yawkins and Billy Marshall. And for aught that I ken they may be art and part in supplying undutied stuff to various law-breaking, king-contemning grocers and even baillies. I am resolved that I’ll lodge informations with the officers of His Majesty’s Preventive forces and get the reward.’
When I had finished I took a glint of my eye at May Mischief to see how she was taking it. I was rather proud of that last bit about the smuggling myself, and I thought that she would see the humour of it too, but instead I saw that she was both pale and of a frowning countenance. Then I minded that the Maxwells of Craigdarroch, all the seven big sons of them, and even the dour Cameronian father, were said to be deeper in the Gentle Traffic, as it was called, than any others in the locality.
It was May who spoke first,
